| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: principal tenant, fifty thousand francs a year for the ground rent of
the house, which, at the end of nineteen years' lease, was to become
the property of the owner of the land. In spite of the costs of
construction, which were something like seven hundred thousand francs,
the profits of those nineteen years proved, in the end, very large.
Cerizet, always on the watch for business, had examined the chances
for gain offered by the situation of the house which Thuillier had
STOLEN,--as he said to Desroches,--and he had seen the possibility of
letting it for sixty thousand at the end of six years. There were four
shops, two on each side, for it stood on a boulevard corner. Cerizet
expected, therefore, to get clear ten thousand a year for a dozen
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 150
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
The Waste Land |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: freight cars, he would have pitied the poor fool. "And I guess Boston'll
have to get along without me for a spell, too," continued Lin. "A man
don't want to show up plumb broke like that younger son did after eatin'
with the hogs the bishop told about. His father was a Jim-dandy, that hog
chap's. Hustled around and set 'em up when he come back home. Frank, he'd
say to me 'How do you do, brother?' and he'd be wearin' a good suit o'
clothes and--no, sir, you bet!"
Lin now watched the great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly
down into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a
division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals, the
great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its
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